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Articles by Brewer Eberly
What is the Way of Christ in Medicine?
This article was originally published by Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary's L. Russ Bush Center for Faith and Culture on May 30, 2025. “Jesus changes everything.” Such is the title of a recent collection of essays by theologian Stanley Hauerwas, who has written much about Christianity and medicine. Indeed, perhaps nowhere is this reality more evident than in the world of healthcare.
The Return of the Family Doctor
I did not expect to enjoy family medicine. My father and grandfather were both family doctors, yet when I started studying medicine myself, I was quick to discover a polite disrespect for primary care. “Why would you go into family medicine?” was a common refrain. This, despite a shortage of primary care doctors that is only expected to worsen.
In Defense of Playlists
We are just old enough to know how to burn a CD. When your hand-me-down first car only had a CD player, burning CDs became an essential skill. Those CDs were our first experiments in custom playlists. It was thrilling when a trusted friend gave you a silver disc with “Great Songs” sloppily sharpied on the front. Inevitably, those songs were great—all the greater because they had been shared by a friend. Login to read more Sign in or create a free account to access Subscriber-only content.
Unsouling the Patient: Notre Dame's Lessons for Medicine
The cathedral at Notre Dame has reopened, over five years after it caught fire in April of 2019. In The New York Times interactive piece “A Miracle: Notre-Dame’s Astonishing Rebirth From the Ashes,” architecture critic Michael Kimmelman and graphic artist Mika Gröndahl explore the remarkable work that has gone into Notre-Dame’s restoration.
In Defense of Human Doctors
In my final year of medical school, I took a “Literature and Medicine” elective taught by a local English professor. One of my classmates wrote a short story imagining a future patient encounter with an artificial intelligence that had long since assimilated every known medical fact and clinical study. Through a series of sensitive prompts and specific questions, the algorithm offered the patient a perfect differential diagnosis.
Heads in the Heavens (or in Hell)
Let our formulas find your soul. We’ll divine your artesian source (in your mind), marshal feed and force (our machines will) to design you a perfect love—or (better still) a perfect lust. O how glorious! Glorious! A brand-new need is born. Now we possess you! (You’ll own that. You’ll own that.) Now we possess you! (You’ll own that in time.) Now we will build you an endlessly upward world, reach in your pocket, embrace you for all you’re worth. Is that wrong? Isn’t this what you want? Amen.
Teach Us to Number Our Days: Health Anxiety and Faithful Anticipation
“Human beings have tried to restrict the river to one course. That’s where the arrogance began. ...
Three Challenges for Talking About Health
Sandro Galea. Well: What We Need to Talk About When We Talk About Health. New York: Oxford University Press, 2019. 274pp, $28.95. One of my favorite ways to orient new medical students on the clinical team is to riff on a 2015 study by the County Health Review: only 16% of overall patient outcomes (defined as quality and length of life) are attributable to what we do in medicine.[1] It’s a sobering statistic — one I use to encourage the students (and myself) to “hold our 16%” with humility.
Saving Friends: What I’ve Learned from Insufferable Patients
“I grasp the hands of those next me, and take my place in the ring to suffer and to work, taught by an instinct, that so shall the dumb abyss be vocal with speech.” —Ralph Waldo Emerson I met the patient i will call Amy early in my residency. “She looks sick,” our nurse told me, displaying a concerned look I had learned to trust. I walked into the examination room to meet a frail, middle-aged woman fervently pacing, tearful and wheezing through a dense miasma of perfume and cigarette smoke.
Toward Remembering Where I Came From
Every place had been displaced, every love unloved, every vow unsworn, every word unmeant to make way for the passage of the crowd of the individuated, the autonomous, the self-actuated, the homeless with their many eyes opened toward the objective which they did not yet perceive in the far distance, having never known where they were going, having never known where they came from.
Toward a Contemporary Confession of Good Medicine
Appears in Spring 2021 There is much to celebrate in the practice of contemporary medicine, from remarkable feats of technological progress, to solidifying a proven training process for disciplined competency, to inhabiting a locus of rare moral consensus in our society—that sick patients need care. And yet it is also true that our practice is beset by ills that it lacks the ability to define and has repeatedly failed to cure.
Mending the Healers — The New Atlantis
What does the lovely flush in a beauty’s cheek mean to a doctor but a “break” that ripples above some deadly disease? Are not all her visible charms sown thick with what are to him the signs and symbols of hidden decay?…. And doesn’t he sometimes wonder whether he has gained most or lost most by learning his trade? I started medical school in 2013.
Chrétiens, Aplatissons la Courbe Mais Restons une "Religion pour les Malades"
Le mois passée, la couronne épineuse du COVID-19 a capté l'attention du monde entier. Il est rare de vivre un malaise mondial répandu à une telle échelle,un malaise pendant lequel nous nous retrouvons tous à vivre la même chose. D'une certaine manière, le bruit de la vie moderne a été évincé par ce que CS Lewis a appelé «le mégaphone de Dieu»: la douleur. Les patients meurent. Les gens ont peur.
أيها المسيحيّون، دعونا نُساهم في تسطيح المُنحنى، ولكن لِنبقَ "ديانة تهتم بالمرضى"
خلال الأسبوع الفائت ركّز العالم انتباهه إلى التاج ذي الأشواك البروتينية، فيروس كورونا المستجد (كوفيد١٩). ومن النادر أن يعيش المرء هذه الحالة من عدم الاستقرار العالمي، حيث نجد أنفسنا كبشر نفكّر في نفس الأمر في الوقت ذاته. بطريقةٍ ما فإن ضوضاء الحياة العصريّة قد تم استبدالها بما سمّاه سي. إس. لويس "بوق الله" ويعني بذلك، الألم.
Cristianos, ‘Aplanemos la Curva’ Pero Sigamos Siendo una ‘Religión para los Enfermos’
[READ IN ENGLISH] Durante la semana pasada, el mundo ha prestado toda su atención a la corona con espinas de proteínas de COVID-19. Es raro experimentar una inquietud global tan extendida, en la que todos nos encontramos pensando en lo mismo. En cierto modo, el ruido de la vida moderna ha sido desplazado por lo que C. S. Lewis llamó el "megáfono de Dios": el dolor. Los pacientes están muriendo. La gente tiene miedo.
The Health Care Debate, Early Church Style
As Christians join the rest of the country in jousting over the proposed changes to our health care system, one significant fact should inform the Christian debate: modern health care is a Christian invention. The reasons Christians developed the world's first health care system—as opposed to simply medical practitioners—are as relevant today as they were 2,000 years ago.
Students Are Scrambling After Universities Close. We Can Help.
They're taking us out of the dorms on Friday. I have to try to pass my midterms while figuring out where my stuff is going to go. When Tommy Britt received a panicked text from a college senior on March 15, it hit close to home. His friend studies at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, where students have been asked to vacate and transition to online learning. Britt could relate. As a Carnegie Mellon PhD student, he is now teaching classes online.
Christians, Let’s Flatten the Curve But Remain a ‘Religion for the Sick’
Over the past week, the world has turned its full attention to the protein-thorned crown of COVID-19. It is rare to experience such a widespread global unease, in which we all find ourselves dwelling on the very same thing. In a way, the noise of modern life has been ousted by what C. S. Lewis called “God’s megaphone”: pain. Patients are dying. People are scared.
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